It seems like British actor Benedict Cumberbatch just can’t escape his past. In 2017, Ancestry.com announced that their staff genealogists had found that Cumberbatch, who plays Sherlock Holmes in the popular BBC television series Sherlock is actually related to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author who first unveiled the detective character in 1887. That came on the heels of Ancestry.com’s revelation that Cumberbatch was also “distantly related” to code breaker Alan Turing, who the actor portrayed in the 2014 biopic The Imitation Game.
It's elementary:
- Cumberbatch and Doyle were both descended from John of Gaunt -- the first Duke of Lancaster and the fourth son of King Edward III. They are 16th cousins, twice removed.
- Cumberbatch is John of Gaunt’s 17th great-grandson, and Doyle was his 15th great-grandson.
- Additionally, University of Leicester researchers uncovered that Cumberbatch is related to King Richard III, whom he portrayed in The Hollow Crown.